News tagged with balloon

Members of the GRIPS balloon team began arriving at McMurdo Station in Antarctica in late October 2015. GRIPS, short for Gamma-Ray Imager/Polarimeter for Solar flares, is an instrument that studies the extremely high-energy ...

US researchers extol the virtues of high-altitude balloons for science education in a research paper published in the International Journal of Learning Technology. According to Jeremy Straub of the University of North Dakota ...

NASA scientists working toward putting people on Mars said Tuesday a supersonic parachute they are developing to slow a vehicle's approach to the Red Planet partially deployed in a test, but immediately ripped apart.

The giant balloon brought down on a cattle station in remote south-west Queensland in April was part of a NASA mission to test the feasibility of using specialised balloons flown in the stratosphere for scientific research.

Balloon

A balloon is an inflatable flexible bag filled with a gas, such as helium, hydrogen, nitrous oxide, oxygen, or air. Modern balloons can be made from materials such as rubber, latex, polychloroprene, or a nylon fabric, while some early balloons were made of dried animal bladders, such as the pig bladder. Some balloons are used for decorative purposes, while others are used for practical purposes such as meteorology, medical treatment, military defense, or transportation. A balloon's properties, including its low density and low cost, have led to a wide range of applications. The inventor of the rubber balloon, (the most common balloon) was Michael Faraday in 1824, via experiments with various gases.